LOL!! You want Goldenrod?? Come to my neighborhood, it's blooming all over the place!
cora

cora's right... the best way to get goldenrod is to dig out a couple clumps from the roadside. my experience with it--slow to get established, once established, tough and slowly spreading.

Yeah, but there are many, many kinds of goldenrods, with all different shaped blooms. Some don't grow wild here, but do very well in a cultivated garden, anyway. My favorite of all IS a native, seaside goldenrod, which gets bloom spikes from 4 to 8 feet tall. It's a wonderful one! And Jim Thomas usually has it at Biosphere.

Your garden loooks great, FA, and I hope you find a goldenrod you really love.

Marcia

What a beautiful raised bed you created! What an improvement over sickly grass. I love the stone wall and your plant combination is very nice. Now you will just need to expand it little by little when you can! Sometimes when I have my heart set on a particular plant, something else even better comes up at the nursery. Happy shopping.

Anna

Very nice, that wall is amazing, did you do that yourself?

Tom

I'm impressed with the wall design too. I'm looking forward to hearing how you made it.

In the past, Lukas Nursery in Oviedo has sold goldedrod plants for butterfly gardening. I haven't been there since April so I don't know if they have any right now.

Christine

What a nice bed and I have to echo others on the wall. I'm always a fan of adding hardscape but I don't have a handy-man resource so I usually just 'wish' for more of it. I really like the stone you used/and the capping... and the way you brought it out of the higher level of grass and in front of the other wall. Very nice!

I agree with Marcia on the variety of goldenrod. I'm pretty sure it is illegal to dig up natives from the roadside, too. :-)

This past spring I bought 2 goldenrod plants from a native nursery up in Dunellon when passing through that area. I've never seen it for sale down here in the Tampa area. Since it was new to me I wasn't sure where to site it. I don't have but a couple of areas that get sun for 4-5 hours a day. I planted mine too close to the front of the border and had to cut it back several times over the summer.

Even though I'm not happy with where it is I'm now glad that at least I have it. It put out buds all over it over the past couple of weeks and just last week started to flower.

I'm including some photos so you can see what I mean. It stands now at over 5' tall - and keep in mind I was cutting it back up until about 6 weeks ago... no telling where it would have gone if not.

A photo of the bloom I happened to take yesteray.

Hope this helps when you are thinking about where to locate your goldenrod... that is once you locate a place to buy some.

Great job again on the planting bed!
Meems

Here is a link that might be useful: Link to Seaside at Dave's Garden

Meems, I got my seaside goldenrod at Biosphere, and it has made new plants for me every year, but not in an invasive way. I have about 6 or 7 plants this year getting ready to bloom, with bud spikes ranging from 4' to 6' tall right now. I have had them as tall as 8' to 9' in the past.

I love this plant, even when not in bloom. It makes nice big rosettes of leaves about 18" tall or so. The leaves can get huge, and it has a nice shape and texture in the garden. And then in mid to late summer, those spikes start coming up out of the middle.

The plant itself doesn't look like other goldenrods, but when it blooms, you see that definite flower. And boy, oh boy, the bees and butterflies love it. Especially bees. I'll post apic when mine start blooming.

Marcia

Marcia,
Can you tell if yours is the same as mine? What you describe sounds the same except for the huge leaves. My Seaside Goldenrod has slender leaves.

Also, do you have to stake the plants? Do you prune them during the growing season prior to budding?

Sounds like yours are really doing well in your garden. I can't wait to see if mine make more plants.

I am really loving them right now along with the bees and butterflies.
Meems

Thanks for the compliments and the suggestions..

I tried Lukas couple of times but could not find it.. I still have to try Biosphere...

Thanks for the pictures Meems.. very nice garden!!

For the wall, it was easier than it looks :) I purchased the stone from Lowe's and starter to build it from the lowest part (leveling each stone at a time). The hardest part was the caps specially b/c I used a hand saw (which is the not best tool for that)...

Fabio

Meems, there may be some different cultivars of sempervirens, I'm not sure, but mine isn't something you could prune. The basic plant is a big rosette of large leaves that look like deer ears or something. And the only tall bits are the bloom spikes that shoot out of the center of them. If you cut those back, you wouldn't have any flowers. I'm attaching a link to the only picture I found that looks like my plants. It isn't blooming, but shows the shape of the basal rosette with some dead bloom spikes that don't look anywhere near as tall as mine. I will take some pictures tomorrow, if I can.

Marcia

Here is a link that might be useful:

Meems, here are a couple of photos of my seaside goldenrod. The first one is the basal rosette that is what
shows all year long, and gets bigger each year, with more rosettes forming around it. I would say the leaves are about 8" long and about 2" to 3" wide.

And in the next one, you can see the bloom spikes coming up out of this one. These particular spikes are about 3 and 4 feet, respectively. They can get much, much taller as the plants mature over a few years.

I did notice that on some of mine, there was not a basal rosette...the leaves had kind of died away, leaving mostly the bloom spike. I think it was due to being a bit crowded around the base. If yours don't have these large basal rosettes, it might just be a temporary thing. By next year, you might see them. They should come back better than ever.

Marcia

Marcia,
Thank you for taking the time to post these pics.

I bought my seaside sempervirens from a little lady who ran a native nursery way back in the woods of Dunellon. She was a real treat. None of her plants were mature at the time and she sold them to me for pennies because of it. My plant does not have the wider foliage like yours. All the leaves are narrow. So now I'm thinking it is not the same variety.

I've been up in north Florida for the past couple of days traveling lots of back roads. The golden rod is blooming and its everywhere and what a treat to see it in the wild.

I am happy to have it in my garden this year and after having observed it growing for a season I now know I wouldn't have located it where I did... I may move it in the spring. It is over 5 feet tall -- I can't imagine how tall it would have gotten if I hadn't pruned it a couple times since spring.

Plants are interesting aren't they? I'm sure I'll never understand them fully. But I will keep trying. LOL
Meems